The Svalbard Special

How and why we took the entire N by Norwegian team to Svalbard to make our May issue.

For this Svalbard special issue, we relocated the whole magazine to Longyearbyen – both the editorial and sales team set up shop at Mary-Ann’s Polarrigg, the wonderful old miner’s rig run by the inimitable Mary-Ann. We did work, though there was a lot of snowmobiling, dog-sledding, laughing and eating great food thrown in, too.

Above, you can see the N by Norwegian office set-up in Svalbard. From left to right: sales managers Martin Hoel and Nils Rosvall, sales director Pär Svälas, publisher Petter Polar Bear, editor Toby Skinner, deputy editor Mandi Keighran, art director Rickard WEstin, and sales manager Oliver Gately. We got four 'Ns" made up, and took them everywhere with us – on Spitsbergen Travel's snow cat, to an old trapper's hut at Fredheim and to the Russian town of Barentburg – putting the N mark on Svalbard.

Partly, we wanted to create the northernmost issue of a magazine ever made, but we were more driven by curiosity. We made this issue in late March/early April, dragging wooden recreations of our logo around the place, but over the past year we’ve also sent writers and photographers to Svalbard in the summer months. We hope this story will be valid whether you go to find midnight sun, total darkness or something in between (as we did). We hope we do it justice, and we hope you enjoy reading.